Interestingly enough, I've sort of come into AH with the exact opposite of what you describe. I'm most comfortable zipping around through a swarm of planes at low level, turning inside a Spit and pinging them until they straighten out or try to climb, or catching a P-38 at the top of a zoom climb and, well...you get the picture. I'm not at all comfortable with sitting up high and circling like a vulture before swooping in to pick off an unsuspecting target, and zipping away before they know what hit them.
Sounds like fun, though.
But I think Soulyss is right about flying outside your comfort zone. This game is so mult-layered that you have to get comfortable with different styles of combat, and really, all three approaches (BnZ, TnB and Energy) take different skill sets. They even require different planes in a lot of cases.
A couple of things I've learned from looking at my own survivability statistics:
1. Fly less. I usually get most of my kills within the first hour of play. After that I think I'm getting so frazzled or frustrated that I'm not flying at my best. When that happens it's probably better to go do something else.
2. Fly smarter. Look around the situation *before* you move in. Assess, and decide if, when and where to strike.
3. Know when to get out. Too often I get dropped because I stayed in a fight too long. If you're thinking now would be a good time to land, it probably is.
4. If defending a base cap against superior numbers, your job is to delay the enemy as long as possible, until help arrives. In some cases, that means getting shot down over and over again. If by offering yourself up you are keeping them from securing the airspace directly over the field and lighting up the vulch, then so be it. *Getting* vulched, however, serves no purpose.
5. Don't fly angry. You just end up doing something stupid.
-Muzzy
